The Full Scoop on the Jellyfish.com Smack Shopping Deal of the Day

I’ve mentioned the Jellyfish.com program here before — they’re an online shopping rebate site with fantastic rates, and they also have a built-in comparison shopping search engine that is really cool and could be the topic of an entirely different post (sometime in the near future). But today I wanted to share the scoop with you on the Jellyfish Smack Shopping Deal of the Day.
If you’re a diehard deal hound like me, you’re looking for cool stuff cheap. Really cheap. And the Jellyfish Smack Deal is where to get it.
(Click Continue Reading to get the full scoop!)

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How does a Microsoft wireless keyboard/wireless mouse combo for about $12 grab you? (Originally $65)
How about an Xbox 360 for $173? (Originally $325)
An iPod Video 80GB Generation 5.5 for $204? (Originally $350)
Or a Toshiba Portable DVD Player for $62? (Originally $180)
This is how it works:
Every business day at 1pm Eastern time, log into Jellyfish.com and it’ll tell you if the Smack Deal is live. When it is, enter that section of the site. There will be a limited quantity of SOME cool item up for sale. They won’t tell you what that quantity is.
Every second, Jellyfish increases its cashback rate on that item, which (obviously) lowers the price after rebate. How low will it go? You don’t know. And they won’t tell you the quantity remaining, either…so it’s sort of a gamble: Do I buy now, or wait for the final price to drop more? How low will other people let it drop before buying them all up?
Adding to the excitement is a chat function that allows Jellyfish members to discuss the product, to share information about pricing elsewhere, ratings of the product, and the merchant’s shipping and return policies. (Keep in mind that the product comes from one of Jellyfish’s merchants — JF doesn’t charge your credit card, they don’t ship your product, they just offer the ever-increasing rebate and then they shut down the auction when their allotted quantity runs out.)
Sometimes the chats can become very lively, with members trying to agree to wait until a particular price level to buy, or with members trying to psyche one another out with claims of how many of the product they think is remaining (a secret that Jellyfish guards very closely; they don’t even allow their own employees to take part in the Daily Smack).
How low will the product go? You never know — it depends on many factors: prices for it elsewhere, the quantity for sale, the demand for that particular product, and who just happens to be online that day. One thing’s for sure: Companies are going to lose a LOT of productivity starting at 1pm Eastern as word spreads about the Jellyfish Smack of the Day!
Let me finish up with a few of the most common questions I’ve heard, as a spectator of a week’s worth of these Smacks:
1. Do I pay the full price or the discount? Yes; you’ll pay the full, starting price of the item to the merchant specified in the Smack details. You’ll get the rebate, which is the part that drives down the final price, somewhere around 60 days after your purchase is made.
2. How will I get the rebate? It goes into your Jellyfish account and you can immediately cash it out (if it’s over $10, otherwise it stays in your account until you reach that amount). You can request payment by check or by PayPal.
3. Can I get it shipped overseas? No. Jellyfish’s rebate program is only available to members of the U.S. and Canada.
4. How many can I buy per day? Just one. And if they catch you trying to use another account to buy a second Smack the same day, they’ll cancel the second order. And yes, they do use some kind of tech geek voodoo magic to check.
5. Who the heck are these Jellyfish people? Are they going to still be around when I get ready to cash out? Jellyfish was started by a couple of guys with experience with internet startups — one of the largest, that you may of heard of, is called NameProtect.com, which they ran for many years before leaving to pursue other interests. Jellyfish.com has been up and running with awesome rebate rates since June of this year — they were in the top 4 of 17 rewards programs I reviewed here on CompareRewards in October — they’ve just been quietly operating under the radar until last week, when the first Smack Deal went live and got everyone talking. This isn’t an operation run out of someone’s basement, either: Jellyfish just received a capital investment of FIVE MILLION DOLLARS (in my best Dr. Evil voice) from a firm that obviously believes in what the founders can do with the site based on their prior performance, their business plan, etc. So yeah, Jellyfish is the new big thing, but they have the smarts and the financial backing to pull this off.
Which addresses the last most popular question, #6: How can they afford to sell stuff this cheap? Again, in my Dr. Evil voice, FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. No, seriously, the merchant drops their profit on the item in return for the increased visibility, and Jellyfish drops their profit by paying out more of their commission on the sale to their members…to the extent of taking somewhat of a loss (depending on how low the price goes) because they can afford to do that and write it off as marketing expense.
If you wanted people to find out about your rebate program, what better way to advertise it? You could write out a big ol’ check to USA Today and pay for an ad that maybe only a fraction of their readers would read, and only a fraction of those would take the initiative to check out online… Or you could spend that money getting real online shoppers to try out your rebate service… and, thrilled with the deals, to tell other people about it (which is what I’m doing here). Viral marketing, they call it.
So, that’s the scoop. It’s a fun way for online shoppers to get an incredible deal. You should definitely check it out. You’ll see me in chat there, as “CompareRewards.” Make sure you say hi!